Wearing a helmet, shorts and a striped summer shirt, Bibak, with a brush in each hand, gently stroked Teddy along the mount’s back.

Teddy turned his head and nodded at Bibak approvingly.

“Hi!” the Boy Scout said in a slightly nervous pitch.

It was the first time he ever touched a horse.

Bibak and seven fellow scouts from Aurora’s Troop 1532 were attending summer camp at the ranch near the tiny town of Elbert.

The troop, which has about 20 scouts, is made up of refugees from Nepal, Burma, Rwanda, Congo, Somalia and other countries.

Summer camp activities include rock climbing, canoeing, kayaking, rifle shooting, archery, swimming and many more offerings. Most have the potential to offer a new experience for the scouts of Troop 1532. The troop is from Aurora’s East Colfax Avenue corridor near Havana Street.

The summer camp experience landed the scouts in a lush, forested area at about 7,000 feet elevation, bursting in tall, seed-topped grasses and bountiful pine trees.

Camp Cris Dobbins, which is part of the ranch, includes a heated swimming pool, a small lake for boating activities, a trading post and a dining hall.

While waiting together in line for lunch one day at the camp, the scouts grew impatient and peeled off together, horsing around and cracking jokes, the African kids conversing in their native languages.

Troop leader P.J. Parmar, a doctor who founded Troop 1532, watched the scouts but took no steps to steer the boys back into line.

Parmar helped the scouts pick various activities for the week-long camp, grouping some boys together at times. But he also broke them off to be on their own at times in a scheduling exercise that was part logistics, part design.

“It’s part of finding an identity,” Parmar said. “It’s something to grab on to, to call your own.”

At the site where scouts spent the night, Troop 1532 had eight tents at its disposal.

Most of the boys crammed into one.

Parmar and fellow troop leader Avery Kong, also a doctor, for the most part practiced a hands-off approach with their charges unless trouble or need necessitated direct intervention.

“This is an outdoor education. We’re all urban,” Kong said. “You throw them into it and they figure it out.”

As Vital Ntagisanmana, 13, and Werals Niyongabo, 14, eyed canoes getting ready to take them out on the lake, Parmar asked the scouts where they had learned to swim.

“At the public pool, in Aurora,” Vital said. “You get pushed into 9 feet, you learn to swim!”

After enthusiastically paddling the canoe straight back into shore, the pair received direct guidance from an instructor in aseparate canoe, then masterfully paddled back toward the lake’s center.

A short time later at the swimming pool, three scouts who didn’t know how to swim were in the water taking instruction and learning a new skill.

Burma native Nain Kee, 13, acted as a spokesman for his fellow scouts.

Kieran Nicholson covers breaking news for The Denver Post. He started at the Post in 1986, at the old building on 15th and California streets. Nicholson has covered a variety of beats including suburbs, courts, crime and general assignment.

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